Ragamuffin Gunner
Lost in the Flood
That's not nearly enough off the cap. Minnesota traded Clutterbuck because they couldn't afford to re-sign him due to the cap. They also bought out Tom Gilbert's $4 million dollar salary. When of became clear they couldn't buy out Heatley, they were in serious cap trouble. They had to do a lot of work to free up the room they had for Cooke and Ballard. Niskanen and $700,000 in cap relief would not have worked for them.
You're right. Clearing 700K in cap space would have been compleatly impossible. Especially considering they have 1.4M in cap space at the moment.